Some days I felt and urgent responsibility to each change of light outside the sunporch windows. Who would remember any of it, any of this our time, and the wind thrashing in the buckeye limbs outside? Somebody had to do it, somebody had to hang onto the days with teeth and fists, or the whole show had been in vain. That it was impossible never entered my reckoning, For work, for a task, I had never heard that word. -Annie Dillard

06 April 2006

The questions are real.

They never stop—like the steady summer rain falling outside my window. I’ve got Miles Davis on the stereo. It’s a “Kind Of Blue” kind of day, if you know what I mean. Some truth is waiting here to be collected, placed on my tongue like a wafer in communion, if only I could ask the right questions.

Who is Jesus?

What difference does it make in my day-to-day life?

Wouldn’t it be easier to be simply an artist and not, dear God, a Christian artist?

How are we to be peacemakers and not a doormat for the world?

How, and my own inner house ever be in order?

Will I ever not be swayed by the world and culture and our place in it?

Will I ever be able to clear my head of petty thoughts long enough to walk the war-torn, bloodstained streets of Belfast, for example, and feel more than that this is good song material?

This bothers me.

Why is it so hard to keep a relationship alive?

This bothers me.

Why do men and women fundamentally break each other’s hearts?

This bothers me too.

Humans are fallen, humans are ethereal. The world is corrupt, the world is beautiful. I hate you, I love you. I keep wishing the fundamentalists are right—that everything is cause and effect, black and white. But I stare up into the mystery, and it’s gray and thick like humid summer rain.